House on Haunted Hill (1959) | There’ll be food and drink and ghosts, and perhaps even a few murders…

From the stylish opening sequence, in which Elisha Cook Jr appears as a disembodied talking head through to the big twist ending, William Castle’s tongue-in-cheek 1959 chiller House on Haunted Hill keeps the shocks and surprises coming.

Vincent Price gives a definitive performance as millionaire Frederick Loren who invites five people to spend the night in a haunted house in which seven people were murdererd – they include the house’s owner Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook), whose brother and sister died in the house, test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), psychiatrist Dr David Trent (Alan Marshal), and Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), who works for one of Loren’s companies. If they survive they get $10,000 each.

Some of the creepy things they have to face include a vat of acid, a creepy old woman and a ceiling that drips blood – while cinema-goers were treated with a classic Castle gimmick, Emerge – in which a skeleton floated above their heads.

Watch the film here in full… and if you click on the lobby card above you can see a full set.